What’s the saying? Oh, yea: “Just when you think everything is fine the world throws one more thing at you”. That’s how I feel right now with this whole Rhetoric thing. They couldn’t just stop at Digital Rhetoric, they had to go to Visual Rhetoric. Even if it came first…my point still stands. Doug Eyman in his work “Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric” (2015) talked about how these two actually work better together than one may think.
There isn’t a concrete definition of what Visual rhetoric is. While it commonly gets “intertwined (with digital rhetoric) and are closely related in a number of ways, it is clear that visual rhetoric’s methods address only one aspect of digital rhetoric analysis and production” (Eyman, 2015). “Visual” could be simply seeing something; but what one person sees could be different to other people. Some may see a blue shirt on someone and others may see a gray shirt–but a shirt is a shirt nonetheless. An argument could be made to communicate how the shirts color doesn’t look right, but in the end, that shirt is a man-made object created to show a statement. Sound familiar?
A painting tells a story without words. What someone wears shows who they are without them not even needing to defend themselves. It’s all about perception. The point is to start and argument. Visual rhetoric is what starts the communication and Digital Rhetoric is where it continues. Think of websites that have information pushed to the side by a photo. The words are there to inform, but the photos are there to visualize the information. To seal the deal. They are the selling points of an opinionated argument because the author has ‘evidence’ which gets more people on their side.
So, what’s the big idea; why do we need two different definitions when they are basically working together? Communication for one. When thinking back to past centuries people used to tell stories by drawing pictures. While the pictures weren’t extravagant or Oscar worthy, they were special to them because it was how they showed who they are. Like now when people wear the craziest outfits and everyone gives them the side-eye. Visually it could be crazy or confusing. That just proves how strategically man-made things were planned out–they are supposed to get us to argue and communicate. It is how we adapt and move forward to create new things. It’s clever, very clever indeed.
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